The Alternative Green Energy Thread

JKenH

thevilla said:

"We will still need almost the same standby FF capacity as we have already and still need to generate almost as much as we do currently (perhaps 1GW less) on those cold still winter days."

So what? Surely the expensive bit is burning gas? Paying for plant to remain idle isn't ideal but don't assume the running costs are not the most significant expense.

That sounds fine in theory but recent experience with responding to low wind generation has not been good with wholesale prices over £4000/MWh (£4/kWh). The intermittent nature of winds heightens volatility in the wholesale electricity market. The higher the proportion of wind then the more volatility in demand for back up from fossil fuel generators and with it price. If prices were just related to cost then the more renewables in the grid the cheaper our power would be but things aren’t that simple.

thevilla

I suspect the wholesale price is related to the high price of gas.  Just a hunch but the whole world seems to be affected not just those exploiting North sea wind.

JKenH

thevilla said:

I suspect the wholesale price is related to the high price of gas.  Just a hunch but the whole world seems to be affected not just those exploiting North sea wind.

The high average prices we are seeing are, as you say, related to the high price of gas but the peak prices we have been seeing are related to very tight generation margins when wind generation is low.

JKenH

UK Gas Production Could Plunge 75% By 2030

Some will no doubt say that this is a good thing. If we can still heat our homes and power our grid with significantly less gas by 2030 then perhaps I wouldn’t disagree. If however we are still dependent on anything like current levels of gas usage then it is going to be bad news for the consumer. 

We must put a value on energy security - do we want to be reliant on imports from the likes of Russia and the Middle East or even the rest of Europe? Also I see no merit in shutting down our own production and then importing gas from Norway so that they can continue to finance their green transition at our expense. Would it not be better both for the UK to produce its own gas, collect the tax from it and see the UK based oil companies spending their profits on their own move to green energy?

The UK could become much more vulnerable to price shocks and geopolitical events unless new offshore fields are approved and developed—and the UK’s gas production could plummet by 75 percent by 2030, the offshore energy industry body OGUK said on Thursday.

Without new investment in new gas fields in the North Sea, the UK will be left more vulnerable to crisis, such as the current one between Russia and Ukraine, the industry association noted.

Domestic production currently meets 47 percent of the UK’s gas demand, 31 percent comes from pipeline imports from Europe, mostly from Norway, and 21 percent from LNG imports. In 2020, Russia supplied 3.4 percent of the UK’s gas, OGUK said.

According to the industry body, new fields are needed in the UK North Sea to stave off a predicted 75-percent plunge in domestic supplies if no new fields are approved. 

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/UK-Gas-Production-Could-Plunge-75-By-2030.html

thevilla

Saying carbon neutral is too hard due to our reliance on gas, other countries need help more etc etc is a bit like aiming for c- at school. You'll never know what could be possible.

michaels

JKenH said:

UK Gas Production Could Plunge 75% By 2030

Some will no doubt say that this is a good thing. If we can still heat our homes and power our grid with significantly less gas by 2030 then perhaps I wouldn’t disagree. If however we are still dependent on anything like current levels of gas usage then it is going to be bad news for the consumer. 

We must put a value on energy security - do we want to be reliant on imports from the likes of Russia and the Middle East or even the rest of Europe? Also I see no merit in shutting down our own production and then importing gas from Norway so that they can continue to finance their green transition at our expense. Would it not be better both for the UK to produce its own gas, collect the tax from it and see the UK based oil companies spending their profits on their own move to green energy?

The UK could become much more vulnerable to price shocks and geopolitical events unless new offshore fields are approved and developed—and the UK’s gas production could plummet by 75 percent by 2030, the offshore energy industry body OGUK said on Thursday.

Without new investment in new gas fields in the North Sea, the UK will be left more vulnerable to crisis, such as the current one between Russia and Ukraine, the industry association noted.

Domestic production currently meets 47 percent of the UK’s gas demand, 31 percent comes from pipeline imports from Europe, mostly from Norway, and 21 percent from LNG imports. In 2020, Russia supplied 3.4 percent of the UK’s gas, OGUK said.

According to the industry body, new fields are needed in the UK North Sea to stave off a predicted 75-percent plunge in domestic supplies if no new fields are approved. 

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/UK-Gas-Production-Could-Plunge-75-By-2030.html

Plans o impose a windfall tax on the current high profits (as Labour propose and no doubt the Tories will implement) are hardly going to encourage additional investment in production in the UK....

michaels

JKenH said:

thevilla said:

"We will still need almost the same standby FF capacity as we have already and still need to generate almost as much as we do currently (perhaps 1GW less) on those cold still winter days."

So what? Surely the expensive bit is burning gas? Paying for plant to remain idle isn't ideal but don't assume the running costs are not the most significant expense.

That sounds fine in theory but recent experience with responding to low wind generation has not been good with wholesale prices over £4000/MWh (£4/kWh). The intermittent nature of winds heightens volatility in the wholesale electricity market. The higher the proportion of wind then the more volatility in demand for back up from fossil fuel generators and with it price. If prices were just related to cost then the more renewables in the grid the cheaper our power would be but things aren’t that simple.

Yes but...although we might see even higher peaks, if the overall level of gas in the mix diminishes because of having more wind then the average price will fall towards the CfD strike price (although I am concerned that it won't really happen like that because of the payments we will end up making for large quantities of 'spill' so for each unit of wind energy we use there will be half a unit of spill that we will still pay for making the average price of the wind we use 50% higher than the CfD price

Hopefully inter-connectors and storage will soak up as much of this as possible but i t could be that the economics of CfDs mean we will considerably overbuild in the short term until we work out what to do with intermittently having huge amounts of basically free power - part time bitcoin mining?

JKenH

ABrass said:

JKenH said:

A good few days work by wind, almost managing to coordinate peaks and dips in generation with demand. Are we, though, nearing maximum wind in the UK? When some days wind is already meeting 60% of demand I am wondering how cost effective it is to invest in much more wind generation than what is already in the pipeline. 

If one were to leave CfDs out of the equation then further expansion of wind is likely to produce ever diminishing returns and put smaller older turbines out of business. I wonder what would happen to the likes of projects like the Ripple wind turbine if the wholesale price is driven down to 5p/kWh? Wind generation is only really profitable when the wind isn’t blowing or when we have external events like the gas crisis bumping up the price. We can of course export our excess but if we remove much more of our FF generation then we will be increasingly at the mercy of imports at times of crisis and in a crisis that’s when the imports are least like to be available. 

There is still an enormous appetite for wind farms with investors (witness the success of the Greencoat UK Wind fund) and some of the Oil Majors are muscling in and paying over the odds as part of their attempts to be seen to be green but do the economics of more and more wind stack up. I am not talking about the environmental argument benefits but hard cash if investors aren’t  going to get burned. 

Nope, there's always export, up to 17GW and climbing.

As I said “ We can of course export our excess ”

JKenH

michaels said:

JKenH said:

thevilla said:

"We will still need almost the same standby FF capacity as we have already and still need to generate almost as much as we do currently (perhaps 1GW less) on those cold still winter days."

So what? Surely the expensive bit is burning gas? Paying for plant to remain idle isn't ideal but don't assume the running costs are not the most significant expense.

That sounds fine in theory but recent experience with responding to low wind generation has not been good with wholesale prices over £4000/MWh (£4/kWh). The intermittent nature of winds heightens volatility in the wholesale electricity market. The higher the proportion of wind then the more volatility in demand for back up from fossil fuel generators and with it price. If prices were just related to cost then the more renewables in the grid the cheaper our power would be but things aren’t that simple.

Yes but...although we might see even higher peaks, if the overall level of gas in the mix diminishes because of having more wind then the average price will fall towards the CfD strike price (although I am concerned that it won't really happen like that because of the payments we will end up making for large quantities of 'spill' so for each unit of wind energy we use there will be half a unit of spill that we will still pay for making the average price of the wind we use 50% higher than the CfD price

Hopefully inter-connectors and storage will soak up as much of this as possible but i t could be that the economics of CfDs mean we will considerably overbuild in the short term until we work out what to do with intermittently having huge amounts of basically free power - part time bitcoin mining?

Yes, I have no doubt that once we see the end of this gas crisis average prices will fall. (I was postulating wholesale prices of 5p/kWh). My argument was that (ignoring CfDs), with what’s already in the pipeline, further investment in wind farms will reduce prices to a level where older/smaller wind farms are no longer economic. 

Edit: If we wind the clock back to 2019 we see the average wholesale price for the year was £42/MWh (4.2p/kWh) so take the gas crisis out and that is the sort of level we might see again with our current penetration of renewables. With a higher proportion of wind generation we have more volatility and potentially higher peak prices. 

Wind speeds might, though, drop further and so perhaps even more stilling may justify more wind turbines. That may not help the economics however as each turbine will be generating less and the OPEX will therefore be spread over less generation.

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?period=1-year&start=2019-01-01&&_k=nu81xf

JKenH

Controversial Norway-UK interconnector project canceled

The cable would have made NOK 8.5bn for the state, and would have been able to reduce the UK's carbon emissions by 2 million tonnes annually.

https://energiwatch.dk/Energinyt/Energiselskaber/article13600904.ece